Tremblant: Telecabine Express

The Telecabine Express travels from the Pedestrian Village at the base of the South Side to the Grand Manitou lodge at the summit and serves nearly every South Side trail at Tremblant. It is the busiest lift on the mountain in the winter, and one of four lifts at Tremblant that run in the summer, but the only one of those that goes to the summit. It was installed by Doppelmayr in 1998 and replaced a Doppelmayr CLD-260 detachable quad called Tremblant Express which was relocated to the Soleil expansion the following summer. Intrawest chose to replace the still relatively new lift because their village development resulted in the main lodge being at the top of the mountain, so they wanted a lift that skiers and foot traffic could use. The top drive terminal has a regular UNI-Spacejet enclosure, while the bottom terminal has a custom enclosure to match the other buildings in the village. This allows for a good view of all the terminal equipment as there is no underskin like on most detachable terminals. It has relatively rare Gangloff cabins which are only found elsewhere at Whiteface and Deer Valley in North America. In fact the lift is nearly identical to Cloudsplitter at Whiteface, having similar length, vertical, cabins, design speed, grips, drive/tension configuration, and even the same exact number of towers, 25. The lift is 8428 feet long by 2116 vertical and has a design speed of 6 meters per second or 1181 feet per minute, and unlike so many other lifts, it will operate at or close to this speed in the winter. Tremblant is Canada's second most visited resort and every bit of capacity that the lift is capable of is needed to keep things moving efficiently. The hourly capacity is rated at 2880, but there aren't quite enough cabins for it and it is closer to 2600 at full speed. In the summer, the speed is a more leisurely 4 meters per second, completing the trip in about 11 minutes assuming no stops. It is one of the most scenic lifts around with a view of Lac Tremblant and the village the whole way down. This lift runs an unusually high number of hours and is scheduled to operate approximately 300 days between Summer 2018 and Winter 18-19, and typically runs for 11-12 hours on operating days. Despite running this many hours, it has aged very well and is still reliable. The cabins are currently rotating through Doppelmayr's refurbishment program and the rebuilt ones look almost new. This fall, Tremblant's flagship lift celebrates its 20th birthday. While the lift could easily operate for another 20 years, the weekend wait times are very long and may lead to a replacement with a higher capacity gondola.